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Writing songs
I was in bands for years and I would always contribute but now its just me and I’m struggling to write songs alone…
How do you guys do it, do you start with drums? Or guitar or a synth and then add your vocals at the end or what is your process?.
Comments
I usually jam around on the guitar until I find a chord progression or a riff I like and then develop it from there.
Basically create two or three musical sections and stitch them together. Once the music is in place I will then try a ton of different vocal melodies and try and pick the best ones. Then write the lyrics and complete the arrangement.
For me it’s only works when I create the music first it doesn’t have to be everything completely finished but just a general idea them the words come
My go-to is to start with a chord progression. 1 progression is fine to start, but more often then not I add at least a 2nd prog, maybe more, that work together. I start tracks in many, many different ways, more then I can count, could be anything really, but the main way I like to begin writing a song is by getting a chord progression I like laid down. Besides picking a key, scale, tempo, the chord progression lays a great foundation for a song. It allows you to then build many other parts of the song off that chord progression, ie, bassline, Arp, lead, chord rhythm, etc… there’s lots of great chord progression app options both for standalone, and Au usage.
In summation, lol.
As a general rule (Key, scale, tempo) chord progression, is a great way to start. Cheers!
There are as many ways of approaching songwriting or composition as you can imagine -- a lot depends on what works for an individual.
Some people are very linear in their approach. They sit down come up with an idea and keep moving that idea forward till they have a song.
Some people basically gather individual ideas and periodically sit down and start stitching together some of the compatible ideas they have collected -- and maybe come up with new ideas to develop them or variations of ideas they've already come up with.
And a lot of people go back and forth. This is true of even people at the highest echelons of achievement. Some them are like, "here's the start of the song, I'll work on it till it's done."
There was a great documentary about Peter Gabriel working on the record that had Biko on it -- starting from before he had written any songs. It starts with him in his studio (which was kind of a nice shed on the farm/estate where he lived -- this was before he was rich enough to have a state-of-the-art studio). He opens up this small suitcase of cassette tapes and he starts listening to them. He had recorded bits and pieces of other people playing music when he was traveling in Africa and he had also recorded himself playing phrases on the piano or synth or drum machine. Just tons of cassettes of bits and pieces. "Oooh, I like that bit." And then he sits at the piano or synth, turns on the tape and starts messing about. And so on. Comes back to the new tapes and is like "that works" and comes up with a little more.
Michael League of Snarky Puppy basically uses Voice Memos on his phone to capture any idea that pops into his ear (and sings it or plays it on guitar or bass) and then goes back to those and picks ones that inspire him. And sometimes songs pop into his mind mostly complete -- and yet he may go back through his voice memos to see if there is some idea that might fit into something he is working on.
I think the one thing that is pretty consistent is making sure that you spend time regularly doing it however it is you like to do it.
I get the outline by jamming around on my guitar or keyboard and then refine it and get things recorded in aum and arrange and mix everything in cubasis. I guess with the song itself, I find a progression I like and then think about where I can take it from that progression. Usually the first progression ends up being the chorus so I’ll find another progression that works for the verse and I’ll usually either use one of the two for an instrumental section or just find a bridge and arrange those sections in a way that gives it a rise and fall with a nice conclusion. I rarely do vocals but I usually don’t write any until I have the foundation laid out
i change with equipment. right now i use ipad/drums/hardware synths.
i normally..:
get stoned. drink lots of water and coffee. turn off phone and make sure i have a couple hours of potentially clear headed work ahead of me.
loop melodic lines in AUM. tweak and mess around. find a tempo i enjoy. add drums that will suffice for what i then attempt to do and thats to write a song format.
i close my eyes/stare out the window. figure out how i feel or what ive been thinking lately. try to pair that with things that have deeply interested me as of late. (this is all a very magical process and even trying to describe it is kind of silly)
any ideas i get as far as lyrics or structure i write in my notes.
keep repeating and chipping away until i finally got something to record.
record. be happy. put out record. get sad again. repeat process
🤣🤣🤣
…and I mean this in the friendliest way. That paragraph, quote of the year.
+1 for staring out a window.
For me, it’s about not having a continuous loop playing of my initial (four bars usually) motif or phrase. Pressing the stop button helps me tremendously. No ear worm. They distort my objectivity. I also like short walks to reset myself.
Most frequently I’ll start with a bassline.
Then independently I’ll also be working on some notion that becomes a specification for a lyric, but first it has to go through a stage of being bad poetry, so I can explore the specification I had in mind.
Then I’ll weld the two together and in doing so have to create a hooky melody to sit on the bassline and hang the words on. Then the bad poetry progresses from exploring the specification to absolutely hammering down the spec.
Then I might think about arpeggios, and I suppose I have to put some drums in. Much later I might figure out which chords there were supposed to be (usually I get that incorrect). Then I despair at the drums but ignore it because I have no affinity with drums.
But yes, the bassline is the seed, along with a spec for bad poetry.
More abstractly… Just watched a video on YouTube and another major decision is the why? What’s the song about, what feelings or messages etc… are you trying to convey. Certain keys and scales and instruments/plugins have certain feels. Also style, what style or styles are you going for? Bands you might want to emulate to a certain degree. At least a broad idea of the stylistic direction. Not a fan of labeling things, but some genres work better at tempos, or time signatures or whatever, this can also help you hone in on the sounds you might want to use.
I also often get stuck at that initial loop. I will try the short walk idea next time.
I've just started the "song" journey - been creating instrumentals for the last 2 years.
As another poster stated start with the chord structure - get a verse/chorus worked out - worry about intro/middle 8 later.
I've been using Lyricist - whilst it does sound a bit vocoderish, it's interface (although occasionally fiddly), allows you to just type lyrics, adjust the timing and hear them against your music. Just pick a subject and see when your mind takes you
. The other good thing is that with a song, you aren't filling the sound arena with melodies - let the singing to most of the work.
Still, early days for me but hoping to release my 2nd vocal track by the end of the week.
I have many ways to start a song, but they they can be divided into two main categories: starting from the lyrics or starting from the music.
When I start from the lyrics it usually works well with lyrics written by other people or lyrics I wrote long enough before so I kind of forgot about them. This is important to read the text without any bias so I can let its musicality inspire a melody, then find a chord progression for the melody and then develop the structure, with additional chord progression if necessary.
The other way is starting from the music. It usually starts from a chord progression on guitar or piano, but it can also be a bassline or even drums. Then find a melody and lyrics.
In both cases I need a foundation, a melody or a chord progression to start building the song. I can develop the arrangement only once I have a clear structure of the song.
haha no offense taken! with vocals lately ive realized how much it helps to just stop the music and force myself to kind of remember and internalize the melody and what im trying to write to it. thanks for reminding me
So many interesting tips and workflows in this thread.
I'll share my personal advice which can be taken with a grain of salt.
The way I usually start a song is with thinking about a theme to the lyrics I want to write, or a subject, a direction, etc. Sometimes the song just wants to be an instrumental, and sometimes not. It's a crapshoot.
When I'm producing EDM, I load a piano preset either in NS2 or Gadget. I lay out the chords, the melody, and the bass - not necessarily always in that order. The reason I do this is to have some manner of musical direction. Almost like live playing out a chord progression on the guitar or keyboard, although programmed rather than played live.
After that either comes the beat or the lyrics or both simultaneously. Again it's a crapshoot. I never know how my muse will affect me on any given day. 😅
With Ambient, it all starts either with a melodic idea, a sound I want to convey, an emotion I want to convey, an interesting recording, etc. Then I just go with the flow from there and live perform it in AUM.
Now that said, instead of my continuing to yak about my songwriting flow, it's time for me to actually write a song! 😂
Wait. Heart broken. Begin.
LOL! Perfect for Rock and Country.
I used to be the first of those but found I ended up in a creative block too often, so switched to the second. However, I almost never return to the sketched out ideas, I just learned to treat them as disposable stepping stones toward the next thing that I actually get inspired enough to finish. As for the sketching part, I occasionally challenge myself to work in entirely different ways, like building out the entire drums and percussion parts of an entire song and then using that as the inspiration for what to layer on top, or just sit twiddling with a new synth until something interesting comes out. The biggest learning for me was to get rid of any pressure to produce a finished thing - as soon as you manage that, it's instantly more fun and generally more productive.